


breathe in, breathe out

by LiveLaughLovex



Series: dare to dance [15]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Minor Character Death, Post-Episode: s10e14 I Ho'olulu Ho'ohulei 'Ia E Ka Makani
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22503871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveLaughLovex/pseuds/LiveLaughLovex
Summary: She goes to the hospital to see Danny that evening, of course. If left to his own devices, her friend will spend the rest of the day finding a thousand different ways to blame himself for what'd happened on that road hours earlier.(Post s10e14. Two conversations Kono has - one with Danny, the other with Steve - in the aftermath of the episode's events.)
Relationships: Kono Kalakaua & Danny "Danno" Williams, Kono Kalakaua & Steve McGarrett
Series: dare to dance [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1507634
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	breathe in, breathe out

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Sleeping at Last's "Sorrow."

It was seven o’clock in the evening when Kono pulled into the parking lot of King’s Medical Center and carefully maneuvered her car into a spot. She drew in a deep breath, exhaling slowly as she placed her forehead against the steering wheel. The last time she’d walked through those doors, she’d hoped she would never have to do so again. It seemed that, once again, that prayer had gone unanswered.

Danny’s injuries were mostly superficial, from what Steve had said. There was nothing life-threatening, but the doctors still wanted to keep him overnight to make sure none of the bruising to his organs was worse than it seemed. She knew him well enough to know that, if left to his own devices, he’d probably spend every second of that blaming himself for what’d happened. 

It wasn’t until about a minute later that she finally climbed from the car and headed for the front doors, inhaling deeply once more once she’d walked through them. This wasn’t the time to allow the memories of every other time she’d done so to take over her mind. She was only there to be there for her friend.

Steve stood from his seat the second she walked through the waiting room door, smiling sadly as she approached. “Hey,” he greeted softly. “Thanks for coming.”

“Of course,” she murmured in response, mustering up a smile and offering a wave to Lou and Quinn. “How’s Eddie doing? Who’s with him?”

“He’s doing… okay,” Steve sighed, shaking his head. “Better than he was before, at least. Tani offered to stay with him while we all came up here. How’s your mom doing?” he questioned, concerned.

That was the reason she’d been away from the rest of them for the day – her mother’s condition had suddenly worsened two days prior, and she’d been at the hospital with her father and brother, waiting for news. It’d taken until earlier that day for them to get any real results.

“She’s doing better than she was before, too,” she replied vaguely. “Her doctor at the Institute’s hopeful she might get back to where she was before all this, at least.”

“Good. That’s good.” He squeezed her shoulder gently.

“Yeah,” she sighed, taking the seat next to his. “Danny’s going to be okay, isn’t he? I know you said they want to keep him overnight, but he’s…”

“He’s going to be fine,” Steve promised. “He’s a little beaten up, and he’s – well, he’s not in the best headspace at the moment, but physically, he’s okay. He’ll be all right.”

“Good. I’m glad.” She leaned her head back against the wall, closing her eyes. “God, I can’t imagine…” She couldn’t finish the sentence, but it seemed he got the gist of what she was trying to say.

“Neither can I.”

She opened her eyes, sitting up straighter in her seat, and then looked across the aisle to address Lou. “Hey, how was Parents’ Weekend?”

“Well, it made me about a thousand bucks poorer,” the captain replied bluntly. “But it was good. It was nice to see the boy. Don’t seem to get much time with him these days. Don’t really blame him, though – I remember what those first few months of freedom were like. He did invite us over for dinner, though.”

“You’re going to be eating Ramen noodles,” Kono informed him frankly. “That’s all nineteen-year-old college kids know how to cook.”

“Oh, please,” Lou huffed. “I’m not naïve. I’m going to _buy_ the food.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Kono laughed, allowing a bit of the day’s stress to drain from her body.

“Commander McGarrett?” a nurse greeted politely, smiling comfortingly as four pairs of eyes shot to her face. “We’ve gotten Detective Williams settled in a private room. You’re all welcome to go back and visit him now.”

“Okay. Thank you,” he added as she turned for the door.

“Of course,” she returned, flashing them another smile as she exited the room.

The room Danny had been given was nice, as far as hospital rooms went. It was clean, at least, and there was plenty of space. The detective was hooked up to an IV and was propped up against a pile of pillows; he opened his eyes when they walked into the room, a smile on his face that was obviously forced. “You all come in here looking like that, I start to think I’m dying,” he quipped.

“There are times to make jokes and times to _not_ , Danny,” Kono informed him. “This is definitely one of the times to not.”

Steve scoffed quietly, shaking his head in amusement. “You doing okay, buddy?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he assured them. “They pumped me full of some of the good stuff, so I’m not feeling any pain. It’s lucky you didn’t come in sooner; otherwise I might’ve thought you were all floating.”

Quinn smiled. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks, Quinn,” he replied genuinely. He glanced at their faces, sighing heavily at the looks of concern he saw there. “Seriously, you guys, I’m fine. It’s a few bruises, and it’s completely ridiculous they think I need to stay here over night.”

“Isn’t one of your internal organs bruised?” Kono questioned.

Danny shrugged. “More than one, actually. Doesn’t make it any less ridiculous they’re making me stay.”

“Okay, buddy,” Steve muttered, amused. “Whatever you say.”

They stayed for about another half hour before Danny finally kicked them out. Kono, however, managed to stick around after the others had left, though not before convincing Steve she would be perfectly safe walking out to the parking lot when she was ready to leave.

“You really didn’t have to stay, you know,” Danny told her once the door had closed behind their leader.

“Eh,” she shrugged, settling into the room’s single chair. “I wanted to. What better way to spend tonight than hanging out in a hospital?”

“I could list at least a thousand different ways, actually,” he retorted. “The fact that you can’t makes me very concerned about your social life.”

“That makes one of us,” she returned.

He snorted quietly, shaking his head. “You really should – go, get some rest,” he urged once more. “You and Steve have that standing pancake breakfast thing tomorrow, don’t you? Need to get your rest if you plan on, uh, on eating your weight in carbs.”

“I’m a cop, Danny. I can function on an hour, if that,” she pointed out. “And I just – I guess I just thought you wouldn’t want to be alone tonight, and since I’m the only one without kids or commitments…”

“Mm.” He fell silent for a moment. “I miss her. Which is ridiculous, I know, ’cause I hardly knew her, but I just – I miss her.”

“You went through more together in those few hours than a lot of people do in years, Danny,” she said gently. “It’s okay to miss her.”

“I…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “You know, when she walked up to me in that bar, and she started talking to me, it felt like, I don’t know, like the universe was finally giving me a break. That she might just end up being my fresh start. And I was – I was good with that, I was fine with that, ’cause she was just – she was gorgeous, and she was funny, and it was like she got me, right from the very beginning. I could have spent hours just talking to her.” He exhaled deeply, looking more defeated than she’d seen him in months. “She wanted to call a Lyft. She was going to call a Lyft, and I offered to give her a ride home. If I’d just let her…”

“If you’d let her leave in a Lyft, then there’s still a chance she would’ve been on that road at that exact moment,” she replied gently. “You can’t blame yourself for this, Danny. There’s no way of knowing you could’ve done anything to stop it from happening exactly the way it did.”

“No, I know.” He glanced over at her. “She died right in front of me. We were talking, she’d asked my name. She was so… she was trying so hard to keep herself together, even at the end. She was scared; she told me that much, but she was trying not to focus on it. I told her my name, and then I asked for hers, and she… she bled out before she could answer.” He cleared his throat, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “Still don’t know her name.”

“It was Joanna,” Kono told him gently, reaching over to squeeze his unbandaged hand.

“It was?” he asked thickly, glancing over at her.

“Yeah,” she confirmed, blinking back tears of her own. “One of the officers who responded to the scene found her wallet in the car. Her name was Joanna Walsh. She was a lawyer from…”

“Massapequa,” Danny finished. “Yeah, she told me that much. She, uh, she have any family there?”

“Two siblings,” Kono replied, knowing he needed the details more than he needed to be protected from the pain. That was the only way people wired like them – people whose entire careers were dedicated to finding and telling the truth – were able to heal. “A brother and a sister. Her brother's in Syria, but her sister... she's going to catch the first flight out she can.”

“Good.” He exhaled slowly, then looked over at her. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” she replied immediately.

“If I do, you're not allowed to mock me,” he warned.

“I’d never do that,” she promised honestly.

He nodded once. “You believe in love at first sight?”

She considered the question for a moment, then nodded herself. “Sure. Yeah, I think – I think, for some people, it’s something that exists. Not sure I’ve ever experienced it myself, but… it’s one of those things you sort of want to _always_ believe in.”

“Good,” he said softly. “Good, ’cause you’re a very smart person, and if you believe in it, it makes me feel a little less crazy.”

“Danny,” she murmured, smiling sadly, “I know you cared about her, and I know you miss her. There’s not an allotted amount of time you have to know someone to feel like the world’s worse off when they leave it, okay? And I don’t think you’re crazy. Well, at this particular moment,” she tacked on, feeling a surge of victory when it was enough to make him chuckle lightly. “Hey,” she added, squeezing his hand once more. “I’m _so_ sorry you lost her.”

“Yeah,” he replied just as softly, clearing his throat. “So am I.”

-o-

“Hey,” Steve greeted the following morning, moving aside so she could enter his home and then closing the door behind both of them. “Thanks for agreeing to this. I know you have an ongoing love affair with the pancakes at that diner we usually go to, but Tani’s got something going on today, and I didn’t want to leave Eddie by himself…”

“Steve,” she cut him off before he could continue rambling, “it’s fine. I love that dog of yours far more than I could ever love any stack of pancakes. I’ll be happy to let you cook every week until he’s back to feeling like himself.”

“More than the pancakes, huh?” he questioned teasingly, leading her into the kitchen. He grabbed a second mug, filling it with coffee before sliding it across the counter to her. “Well, I will be sure to tell him so. It’ll make him feel special.”

“Well, he should,” she returned seriously, smirking when her friend simply rolled his eyes. “Where is he, by the way?”

“He’s taking a nap,” Steve informed her, ladling a bit of batter onto a pre-heated griddle. “The doc says rest is good for him; that routines, they can really help, so I’m trying to get him on a schedule, see if it’ll make things a little easier for him.”

“I hope it does,” she replied, taking a sip of her coffee and then placing the mug back on the counter. “He’s a sweet little guy. It sucks he’s going through this.” She shook her head.

Steve nodded, using a spatula to remove two pancakes from the pan once they were cooked through. He slid them onto a plate, then placed it in front of her, along with butter and syrup. “It does. The doc, though, he thinks removing those plants is really going to help him out.” 

“Well,” she sighed, picking up her fork, “let’s hope he’s right.” She waited until he finished up with his own breakfast and claimed the seat next to her before broaching the subject they’d both been avoiding. “So. Adam’s back.”

“He is,” Steve confirmed needlessly.

“He say anything to you about where he’s been, what he’s been up to?”

The lieutenant commander shook his head. “Said he needed to get away, clear his head. Didn’t say much else.”

“By the look on your face, you think he said plenty,” Kono remarked. “He just didn’t do it verbally.”

“It’s nothing,” he tried to reassure her, sighing when he failed to do so. “I just got a feeling, that’s all. I’m naturally suspicious, though, so there’s no telling if…”

“We spend all day long listening to those little voices in the back of our minds,” she pointed out. “That’s what helps us do our job. You can’t block out that voice just because he’s your friend. He’s not – he isn’t the same person we knew before. He can’t be.”

“So, what, you want me to report him to HPD, have them lock him up?” he questioned evenly, though the look in his eyes suggested he was feeling anything but calm.

“No,” she returned just as calmly. “But I want you to be honest. You can’t ignore the signs just because you know him. His girlfriend was snatched from the shower right in front of him; her father was _killed_. I can guarantee you he isn’t thinking clearly, and when someone with ties to the Yakuza isn’t thinking like they normally would, then being worried they’re going to do something they would never do otherwise is probably a good idea. For your sake _and_ for theirs.”

“You think we’re going to have to save Adam from himself?” he questioned.

“Yeah,” she replied seriously. “I think we might.”

He nodded, meeting her gaze. “Something was off with him. He’s not telling the full truth. I don’t know why he’s lying, if he even is, but… there’s definitely something wrong.”

“Okay,” she said just as quietly. “Then we should probably figure out what it is before he does anything exceedingly stupid.”

“We should,” he agreed. “How much of your time do you spend saving us from ourselves, you think?”

“Oh,” she scoffed, reaching for her mug, “enough for it to qualify as its own separate full-time job.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he told her lightly, an amused glint in his gaze.

“You really should,” she said seriously, finishing up with her pancakes. “Though I will happily take these pancakes as payment.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that,” he assured her.

“Please do.”

**Author's Note:**

> It says something about me that, even knowing what was going to happen in this episode, I managed to get overly attached. I'm legitimately upset about this death, and I'm already thinking of writing something where those two get a happier ending, because they deserve it. All right; I'll get down off my soapbox now. I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
